A disproportionate emphasis on the work of Western European and North American scholars has been a feature investigations into development academic study religion. This article seeks to examine how non-European intellectual, Syrian Muḥammad Kurd ʿAlī (1876–1953), produced transmitted knowledge about religions in his encyclopedic historical topography ‘Greater Syria’—the Khiṭaṭ al-Shām (1925–192...